[NAGDU] FW: Amendment 6 - Court Fees

Sun Oct 20 23:31:04 UTC 2024

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-----Original Message-----
From: NAGDU <nagdu-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of annettenowakowski--- via NAGDU
Sent: Sunday, October 20, 2024 4:23 PM
To: Raul A. Gallegos (NFB) via NAGDU <nagdu at nfbnet.org>
Cc: annettenowakowski at att.net
Subject: [NAGDU] FW: Amendment 6 - Court Fees

From: Rep. Donna Baringer <donna.baringer-house.mo.gov at shared1.ccsend.com> 
Sent: Sunday, September 29, 2024 6:10 AM
To: annettenowakowski at att.net
Subject: Amendment 6 - Court Fees

Amendment 6 - Court Fees

As your 82nd district representative, my goal is to offer you information on the Amendments so you can make an informed decision. The write up is not to tell you "how " to vote rather assist you with the sometimes confusing ballot language in the upcoming November 5th election.  

~  Donna Baringer

AMENDMENT 6 – COURT FEES

OVERVIEW

Amendment 6 asks voters to amend the Missouri Constitution to override longstanding state Supreme Court precedent and authorize revenue from court fees to be used to fund salaries and benefits for current and retired county sheriffs and local prosecutors.

A constitutional change is necessary to achieve this purpose because the Supreme Court has ruled since at least 1986 that laws imposing mandatory fees on court cases to generate revenue for purposes other than judicial operations violates the “open courts” provision of the state constitution. Amendment 6 would add a new subsection to the open courts provision to specifically allow earmarking court fee revenue to supplement salaries and benefits for sheriffs and prosecutors.

The General Assembly placed Amendment 6 on the statewide ballot by approving Senate Joint Resolution 71 during the 2024 legislative session. It passed by votes of 23-10 in the Senate and 91-45, with six members voting present, in the House of Representatives. Both support for and opposition to SJR 71 was bipartisan.

Although by default the Secretary of State’s Office prepares the ballot language for measures placed before voters, the General Assembly exercised its prerogative under state law to write its own ballot question as part of SJR 71. However, a lawsuit challenged the ballot language as being deceptive for failing to make any mention of the measure’s true purpose which would mislead voters. The challenged legislative language said:

“Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to preserve funding of law enforcement personnel for the administration of justice”?

In striking down the legislature’s language as “misleading, insufficient and unfair,” Cole Circuit Judge Cotton Walker identified a litany of problems with it.

“The Legislature’s summary statement that fails to inform voters of the central feature of the proposition is not a true and impartial statement of SJR 71’s purpose,” Walker wrote. “As proposed, the summary obfuscates the true nature of the substantial change SJR 71 would affect by using words and phrases designed to elicit ‘yes’ votes. The ballot title summary would lead a reasonable voter to believe that a ‘yes’ vote keeps in place existing funding for police officers, sheriffs and the State Highway Patrol. Instead, a ‘yes’ vote would authorize the levying of new costs and fees.”

Judge Walker rewrote the ballot language to accurately explain Amendment 6’s purpose. A three-judge panel of the Missouri Court of Appeals Western District largely upheld Walker’s rewrite, though it made minor modifications to it.

The Western District’s rewritten language for Amendment 6, followed by the official fiscal estimate prepared by the State Auditor’s Office, says:

“Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to provide that the administration of justice shall include levying of costs and fees to support salaries and benefits for certain law enforcement personnel”?

State and local governmental entities estimate an unknown fiscal impact.

SUPREME COURT PRECEDENT

Revenue from mandatory court fees traditionally has gone to support judicial functions, or what the Missouri Supreme Court refers to in its precedent as the “administration of justice.” Over the years, however, the General Assembly has passed legislation imposing a variety of fees in civil and criminal cases that earmark the revenue for other purposes.

In the 1986 case Poole Harrison v. Monroe County, 716 SW 2d 263, the Supreme Court ruled fees imposed to support non-judicial functions violate the “open courts” provision of the Missouri Constitution. That provision, Article I, Section 14, says:

“That the courts of justice shall be open to every person, property or character, and that right and justice shall be administered without sale, denial or delay.”

Lawmakers enacted the fee at issue in Harrision – a $4 court surcharge to pay for statutorily required salary increases and training for county elected officials – in 1984 as part of Senate Bill 601. In a per curium opinion not attributable to any particular judge, the court unanimously held the fee didn’t pass constitutional muster.

“The proper test is whether the court costs required are reasonably related to the expense of the administration of justice,” the court said. “Examined under this test, S.B. 601 civil court costs bear no reasonable relationship to the expenses of the administration of justice; S.B. 601 civil court costs are collected to enhance the compensation of officials of the executive department of county government. We, therefore, hold that the fees imposed in civil cases by S.B. 601 are unreasonable impediments to access to justice in violation of Article I, Section 14.”

Despite the court’s clear ruling on this point, the legislature on occasion has continued to enact laws imposing new mandatory court fees with the revenue generated earmarked for a variety of non-judicial functions. Furthermore, until and unless an aggrieved party challenges the constitutionally of a particular law, the law remains in full force. Because mounting a court challenge typically is far more expensive than paying the fees, such challenges are rare.

So it was with a law the legislature enacted in 1983 imposing a $3 surcharge on all civil cases and a $2 surcharge on criminal cases that dedicated the revenue to the Missouri Sheriffs’ Retirement System. Lawmakers amended the statute in 1997 to make the fee a uniform $3 in both civil and criminal cases and also extended it to municipal court cases.

The constitutionally of this fee, which generated roughly $2 million a year for the retirement system, went unchallenged until 2017. The case, Dan Fowler v. Missouri Sheriffs’ Retirement System, 623 SW 3d 578, eventually reached the state Supreme Court, which unanimously ruled in June 2021 that, like the fee in Harrison, the $3 surcharge for sheriff’s retirement benefits supported an executive, rather than judicial, purpose.

“Harrison laid down a bright-line rule that court costs used to enhance compensation paid to executive officials are not ‘reasonably related to the expense of the administration of justice,’ and, therefore violate Article I, Section 14,” Judge Zel Fischer wrote for the court. “Applying Harrison’s bright-line rule, (the sheriff’s fee) is not ‘reasonably related to the expense of the administration of justice,’ and, therefore violates Article I, Section 14 of the Missouri Constitution.”

To circumvent the Harrison and Fowler precedents, the Missouri Sheriffs’ Association lobbied the legislature to put a constitutional amendment before voters expanding the definition “administration of justice” to include funding for county sheriffs and prosecutors, whose retirement system also benefits from a court fee that is vulnerable to challenge.

If ratified by Missouri voters, Amendment 6 would add the following subsection to Article 1, Section 14:

“In order to ensure that all Missourians have access to the courts of justice as guaranteed by this Constitution, the administration of justice shall include the levying of costs and fees to support salaries and benefits for sheriffs, former sheriffs, prosecuting attorneys, former prosecuting attorneys, circuit attorneys, and former circuit attorneys.”

ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT OF AMENDMENT 6

Without the $2 million a year in revenue from the fee the continued solvency of the Missouri Sheriffs’ Retirement System is in jeopardy, as is the system’s ability to provide the benefits earned by retired sheriffs.

Amendment 6 will allow court fees to fund benefits for sheriffs and also prevent the courts from striking down the fee that supports the retirement of county prosecutors as well.

If these fees aren’t given constitutional authorization and protection, then state and local taxpayers ultimately will end up directly bearing increased costs for maintaining these retirement systems.

ARGUMENTS IN OPPOSITION TO AMENDMENT 6

Using revenue from court cases to directly fund salaries and benefits for sheriffs and prosecutors is dangerous as it could provide an incentive for them to bring more criminal cases – not in the interest of public safety but to protect their financial self-interests.

Amendment 6 goes beyond restoring the unconstitutional fee that supported sheriffs’ pensions and protecting a similar (and likely unconstitutional) fee for prosecutors to empower the legislature to add an unlimited amount of new court fees to benefit sheriffs and prosecutors. 

Part of the open courts provision of Missouri Constitution ensures that “justice is administered without sale.” Amendment 6 would abandon that ideal and give constitutional protection to the practice of “taxation by citation.” 

Amendment 6’s original ballot language was misleading. 

Citizens for Baringer | 5942 Bishops Place | St. Louis, MO 63109 US

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